


Catalyst

by justanotherStonyfan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Multi, PWP without Porn, Showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:45:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2338982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They would grow in number and knit together so tightly there would be no breath between them.</i><br/>And Steve, as it turned out, would be their catalyst. </p>
            </blockquote>





	Catalyst

The world spun on, life continued and, just as the Avengers had come together to fight the battle of New York, they would come together again. They would grow in number and knit together so tightly there would be no breath between them.

And Steve, as it turned out, would be their catalyst. 

It started, funnily enough, with a dream. It wasn't one of those typical plotline-enhancing dreams, the way he saw in movies. He hadn't gone to sleep pondering a problem only to wake in the small hours of the morning with a cry on his lips and the answer right in front of him. He hadn't been searching for something and suddenly been shown the way. He didn't dream of someone he hadn't seen for years or horrors he tried not to think about or the future he'd never had or...any of that.

That night, he just dreamed. 

There was a taxi, and a worn down house, like the ones out in the burbs that nobody cared about any more. They were high up on a hillside and he was running down the streets, in civvies, away from nothing he could perceive, when a black car pulled up alongside, completely unmarked aside from a little while “taxi” printed in all capitals near on the left hind wheel-well. 

And when the car stopped, he was out of breath, red brick houses crumbling around him, as though houses were made of red brick in this part of town. Whichever part of town this was, whichever part of town looked like the Arizona desert. 

The car was covered in dust and suddenly, he had his suit, his shield. And the door swung open – he didn't even check for who might be in the car. He just dived in, mindful of the invisible sense of impending doom that was chasing him through the streets. 

And then he was on a couch – old and pale red and worn, yellow padding showing through the holes, and he was given a blanket – thin, scratchy wool that was the color of dirt – and told to sleep.

He turned, could not find a way to lie, could not sleep and, when he sat up, he was back in the car, the world travelling fast outside. He'd thrown a glance back over his shoulder while Clint turned in his seat to Steve's left and nocked an arrow, ready to loose it if he needed to. Natasha leaned on the back of the driver's seat and muttered “faster” in Russian to whomever was driving. Steve just looked at the two of them and the ease with which they smiled at him.

He'd woken up not long after and gone about his life. 

And he thought nothing of it for a while – he hadn't felt as though he was being chased once he was awake. There was no psychological fear he was trying to outrun. He didn't need rescuing. Clint and Natasha, as inseparable as they were, were going about their lives too when he woke and the team were milling around as usual. 

He barely even remembered what he'd been dreaming by the time he'd inhaled his first cup of coffee.

~

It wouldn't have occurred to him to do it if they hadn't suggested it first. And, by suggested, Steve meant done it themselves.

With a day job like theirs, the easiest thing to do was die. You needed no effort and no concentration. All you had to do was stand still and close your eyes, and the disadvantage to that was that you didn't even have to try to do it. You just had to get distracted, get surprised, get tired – all things that came with the job anyway – and then, a split-second later you were nothing but dust, or goo, or bones, or any other remnant of yourself that whatever weapon-du-jour the villain-du-jour had ended up reducing you to. And Steve didn't want to die. He very much wanted to live, and he very much wanted everyone else to live, too.

Almost-dying was pretty regular for him, and for the rest of the Avengers, to the point that it would have worried him to think about it, if he'd ever stopped to think about it. Death shouldn't be regular for anyone, but there they were, all of them. So when Clint and Natasha slid into their seats on either side of him, covered with dust and dirt and blood – their own and others' – it was simple.

They were all glad to be alive. All glad to still be breathing when so many others weren't. And Steve couldn't even remember where the thought came from when he turned his head to look at Clint, again to look at Natasha. They were inseparable, and yet here they were on either side of him, hemming him in, keeping him safe.

Maybe it was that. The idea that they existed together. Maybe that was what made him believe that they were safe, because Clint and Natasha, it seemed, had to exist together. Lose one, of course, and he'd lose both, but the universe wouldn't be so callous would it? The universe would never be so unfair as to kill one of them and leave the other. And to take both would be unfair. And so he'd never lose both.

And, in turn, maybe that was why he felt better here, with both of them, between both of them. Because if they were safe together, and he was between them, then he was safe too, no matter how much of a lie his reasoning was.

Debriefing went as well as it ever did, boring but necessary, a hindrance though they all wanted nothing so much as to be back, nothing so much as a firm mattress, a soft pillow, cool sheets. He imagined, as he watched Coulson speak to them quietly, removed from everyone else, that it must be nice to have someone waiting for you to come home.

It must be nice to have someone to give you orders, to help you follow them, someone to speak to about problems or choices or favorite coffee or anything. Someone to answer when you checked in, someone whose earpiece was reserved for your voice.

Coulson was always somewhere close, too, and Steve remembered what that kind of feeling was like, even if it had been too long.

Tony, ever busy, and Bruce, ever happy to tag along with Tony, disappeared with barely a backward glance. Bruce would sleep while Tony worked, because Tony would work until the adrenalin wore off. Thor needed no such rest but would probably take the chance to enjoy some downtime. Much like Steve, he slept and rested when he could, because none of them knew when the next call out would be. Resting when you weren't tired meant all the more energy when it was needed. And nobody would have demanded Thor stay anyway – he tended to grow restless in confined spaces.

But Steve, Steve felt...unsettled. While they were all Avengers, Bruce was separate. The Hulk was a different...person, if you could call him a person. And Tony had his suit. Thor was a god.

But Clint and Natasha? They were human. The most skilled humans Steve had ever met, sure, but still human, still breakable; he was closer, in the way he operated and in his general humanness, to both of them than to the other three. 

Tony could get thrown into a car, Thor was liable to get up if you hit him with a train and the Hulk deflected everything from bullets to aliens. But Steve could be cut and would bleed. He could fall and would be in pain. Maybe not as much pain as Clint and Natasha, but the principle was the same. He, and they, were only human – not human encased in metal, or rage mutation, or god.

Which, he supposed, was why they shared a cab back to the tower. If they were going to go anywhere, they'd stick together. Three battered humans in the back of a sedan, broken and bleeding and close to dropping from exhaustion.

Steve had done that once, come close a few more times. Only after a fight, when the adrenalin rush gave way to the euphoric high of having lived through the too-much-too-fast of combat and the urge to seek comfort in whomever's arms were closest, and when that high and those urges had wound down into the sudden depression of too-little-not-enough that always followed, would the true enormity of the physical and mental effort surviving had taken truly make itself known.

It wasn't dangerous in itself. There was no chance someone would drop in the middle of the battlefield – no more so than usual, at any rate. 

But Steve vaguely remembered the one occasion they'd spent three days combating an artificially created creature off the east coast, had to tag-team in order to get medical attention and to grab a snack every now and again, and then come home to debrief on the carrier. 

He hadn't eaten enough, of course – that would have been impossible with the few minutes here and there he'd managed to wrangle in order to stock up on sugar and caffeine between fighting and evading – and remembered precisely the moment when they'd walked in, half-frozen, absolutely drenched, bleeding and coughing and limping and stifling their noises of pain, and moved to stand in front of the screen in order to review the surveillance and in-suit footage of the fight they'd just completed.

He also remembered feeling suddenly as though he were on a carrier at sea instead of in the air.

And when he woke up in one of the sleeping berths close to the medical bay, wondering what on earth had happened between there and here, Coulson was with him, with a cardboard carrier containing two steaming cups of actual coffee in one hand, and a small package of what looked suspiciously like sugared donuts in the other. He offered them with a smile and told Steve it had been Stark, that Tony had put on the suit and flown to the nearest Starbucks for a venti caramel latte _and_ a venti cappuccino and Coulson had somehow gotten his hands on a small package of Little Debbie powdered donuts.

“Just to start you off,” he'd said, and Steve had taken them, wide-eyed and full of thanks.

“Where did you manage to get these?” he asked, and Coulson just gave him one of his beatific smiles. 

“I know a place,” he'd answered, answering without answering as always, and that had been that.

Once he'd wolfed Coulson's donuts and inhaled Tony's coffee, he'd had enough strength to make it to the mess hall, where he proceeded to eat his fill. Which was a lot, but apparently the kitchen staff had been forewarned. 

The helicarrier's security footage, that Coulson had later procured for Steve to watch, showed the Avengers near dead on their feet, shuffling together to watch the replays of the three-day fight, and then showed Steve sway left a little, catching himself before he swayed back a little, and then he sank onto his knees and pitched forward to lie still on the floor.

“It was actually kind of graceful,” Coulson had told him in that calm, inimitable tone of his. And then, “feel better.”

And Steve had been left watching the grainy footage of the Avengers clustering around him, moving him into recovery for Tony to check his pulse, then listen to his breathing, only for Tony to sit back on his heels a moment later, settling one hand on Steve's head.

“He's snoring,” he said, voice tinny through the speakers. “Thank god.”

Bruce took off his glasses to wipe his brow, Thor's smile was blinding, Clint just grinned and Natasha's shoulders slumped a little. Steve had passed out more than a few times in his life before, of course he had – from everything from illness to blood loss. But this particular occasion had been a simple inability to stay awake any longer, more of a crash than a collapse. So they'd moved him to a bed and let him rest, and there had always been food near him when he needed it after that.

But, as they creaked and groaned their way out of the car, leaving dust and dry blood on the seats and most of their energy somewhere behind them too, Steve knew he needed sleep. More importantly, he could see that they needed it, too.

As they stepped into the elevator, doors closing behind them, they stood close to him. Natasha's curls were grey with the concrete dust, Clint's arms shredded from the plate glass window. His own shoulder was aching from the car but they were still in one piece, and it surprised him just how much that negated. His headache wasn't so bad, he could drag one foot in front of the other. He joined them in the elevator and stifled a yawn – Clint didn't bother stifling his own.

“I need a shower,” Clint said as they began to move, as though it didn't matter at all. Natasha didn't agree, didn't disagree. She made a small, vague sound of her own that could have been an answer, or acknowledgement, or perhaps a groan of the effort it took to remain standing. “Did good today.”

And Steve answered without thinking – head of the team, leader, there to reassure and be the anchor and all of those other clichés. 

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice was rough and just as tired and sore as the rest of him. They weren't looking for confirmation, neither of them. They didn't need anyone to tell them they'd done well. They were alive and they were on the winning side – Clint and Natasha were both well aware that they'd done well.

But Steve put as much into that one word as he could. He couldn't tell them what he felt, what he wanted to tell them, because it was pointless and inadequate. It was the same thing he felt every time – he was glad they were alive, glad he hadn't lost them and that they got to keep on living, he was proud of their efforts because they were part of his team and they were his friends, he was glad their injuries weren't serious and he wanted to grab them both and crush them close just to be sure that they were real, that he wasn't dreaming.

It had been a long time since he had that chance, and sharing drinks over a rickety table in London, with barely enough room between you to raise the glasses to your lips, was a distant memory now. Especially when all he had here was a kitchen table that four out of six (at most) of them (only sometimes) sat around. 

There wasn't any singing, there wasn't any laughter. There was civil conversation and there were smiles all around, and they were all getting on now at least. But he missed standing shoulder to shoulder, shouting to be heard over the sound of other people having just as good a time as he was, being jostled like everybody else and loving every moment of it.

There seemed, these days, to be so much distance between people. Steve might have been standing on the other side of the Grand Canyon for all the vast, echoing nothingness that separated him from everyone else.

But Clint looked at him when he spoke, eyes sharp and his gaze unwavering. Natasha had also turned her head, and they both looked at him with expressions he couldn't decipher. He thought, for one awful moment, that he'd said the wrong thing and that their trust – already so carefully given – had been betrayed by his interruption alone. 

Or perhaps they could understand the words he could not say, the words he had not said. They were both so perceptive, maybe he'd offended them by his familiarity, by his closeness and his desire for greater closeness  
He wondered if Clint could see the want for laughter at mealtimes, if Natasha noticed the hatred he had of isolation. And perhaps they didn't welcome it.

And then Clint looked at Natasha, and Steve _knew_ he was missing the conversation. They didn't need to speak – they never needed to speak; like two halves of a whole, they were the only two people Steve had ever seen who just _knew._ And he dropped his gaze, staring at his shoes. 

Of course they didn't need his confirmation, neither of them needed his reassurance. 

How long had they been working together without him? How long had they been relying on each other and having silent conversations when he had been barely alive beneath so much ice that seventy years could pass above him?

The elevator mercifully chose that moment to slow to an efficient halt, the way only J.A.R.V.I.S could manage, and the doors opened in front of Steve – they'd arrived at his floor. And he had taken two steps towards the open doors and the cream carpet and oak furniture that lay beyond, when a small, strong, warm hand, the heat of it felt even through the fabric of his tattered uniform, didn't even close around his wrist. It simply rested against him, to stay him through suggestion without physically holding him back. 

He frowned at it, confused, and then looked up to see that it was Natasha. She had barely moved and her expression was still as unreadable as always, but she stared at him unblinkingly.

The absence of Clint beside her made him turn back and, sure enough, Clint – who must have moved behind him when he turned – now stood between him and the elevator doors. 

Steve had no idea what to do. Were the situation any different, he might be afraid; like predator to prey, they'd trapped him easily, and he might be stronger than them but they were two to his one, trained assassins to his exhausted soldier, and in synch with each other in a way Steve hadn't even thought possible.

But he didn't feel threatened, not when Natasha's fingers curled around his wrist, not when Clint stepped forward and touched his hand to Steve's shoulder, encouraging him back into the elevator by their combined efforts.

The doors closed once more, and the elevator moved again, and Steve stood still, staring back at Clint, Natasha's gaze burning the back of his neck. 

When the elevator slowed for the second time, it was to draw up at Clint's floor. 

Natasha had one of her own, but he and she each spent as much time on their own as on each others'. And Steve only knew that it was Clint's floor because Natasha's walls were cream and Clint's were magnolia – a subtle difference but one Steve's eyes could pick up nonetheless. 

But it was Natasha who walked out of the elevator first, fingers slipping down his wrist into his palm instead.

“There's a shower on this floor,” she said, and Steve just followed after her, Clint walking almost silently behind them. 

“Every floor,” Clint said softly, and Steve glanced back at him, putting one foot in front of the other because that was what Natasha was doing, because that was what Clint was doing.

It didn't take them long – the huge shower stall was already fogging up when they came into the bathroom, J.A.R.V.I.S having already started the shower, the multiple heads creating the kind of racket that would become enough white-noise to soothe. And Clint made light work of his own boots, socks and vest.  
“You first, Cap,” he said quietly, not unkindly, and Steve stopped looking at him to look at the shower stall – warm, cleansing, ridiculously inviting.

Natasha took her boots and her socks off, unzipped her suit down to her navel, without even sparing Steve a second glance, as though his presence didn't concern her at all. Her skin was smooth, creamy, and her breasts – supported by a bra that was surprisingly feminine, he guessed because they'd had maybe five minutes to go from milling around and doing nothing to being suited up and on the street – were visible enough that his mouth went dry.

When he looked back at Clint, he saw someone so much the same and so different at the same time that it made his mind spin. Where she was pale and smooth, he was darker, harder, well-defined muscles and angles Steve wanted to touch just to follow the lines, just to memorize. If there was anything sexual about it, he'd worry about that later – he was too tired to feel anything close to desire now. But he and she were beautiful, both of them, if just as tired as Steve was himself.

As Natasha peeled her suit down to her waist, he followed the movement of her hands with his eyes, averting his gaze a moment later. He felt alien himself, here. This was their place, their moment, their time together and here he was standing between them as they undressed.

But they'd fought hard together, repeatedly, ended up with suits burned or torn or worn so that by now almost nothing of each other had been left unseen anyway. And Steve had spent a long time growing comfortable in his own skin around others, sharing rooms and barracks and beds on occasion, if the weather was cold enough or the trauma great enough. 

And so, eventually, he nodded, unzipping the suit's jacket. Clint assisted when Steve found his joints too sore to get it back off his shoulders, to get it down his arms, and then the material hung loose at his waist while he tugged his undershirt over his head. 

Natasha was watching him, as he was sure Clint was, too, and he couldn't read her expression. He could never read her expression. He had a hard enough time reading Clint's, too.

Warm fingers touched his back, beneath his left shoulder blade, and Steve could feel that there was _something_ there – the tenderness of his skin said either a bruise or a light graze, and he looked over his shoulder at Clint.

Clint had marks where his suit had not covered, lines of grey and red that gave way at his shoulders to unmarked skin. Natasha turned as she eased her suit away and Clint helped her, too – Steve saw that her tide-marks were more similar to his. Hers began at her neck and wrists where his own painted the lower half of his face like a five o'clock shadow, a clear indication of where the cowl ended. But all of their injuries extended lower than their collars, came further in than wrists and shoulders.

Vicious red scratches marred the skin of Natasha's back, just as Clint's shoulder still bled a little. For his own part, Steve's flank was still bruised an ugly purple, and he bent with a wince to tug the boots from his feet, flexing stiff toes as he peeled off his socks. 

With barely a thought for the fact that he was in company, or the knowledge of just whose company it was, he stripped himself of the rest of his uniform and looked to Clint. He found he didn't need to speak to ask his question.

“It's fine, Cap,” Clint told him, starting on his own belt. “You first.”

Steve tugged the frosted glass of the shower stall sideways, and the door slid back so that steam and heat hit him like a wall, and he almost fell into it, so eager was he to feel the water on his skin. The stall, however, even with his size, would be big enough for the three of them, and he stood under the spray of one of the showerheads and waited, the door still open, as they stripped off the remainder of their clothes, too.

Natasha joined him first, stepping in beside him to stand under the next flow of water, eyes closed, face upturned to greet it. She ran her hands through her hair, settled her elbows against the tile and stood still, hair darkening with the water, flattening against her skull. Goosebumps raised on her skin and Steve looked at them because they were there, at the vast expanse of them over her shoulders and her back, over her breasts, her nipples dark and inviting in a way he couldn't remember feeling before. She turned her head to look at him, without moving the rest of her body, and he looked back at her, waiting.

And he stared until Clint joined them, closing the door behind him, turning his back to the spray so that the water beat down at the nape of his neck to sluice over his shoulders, down his abdomen and down, all the way to his toes. He stood with a posture that suggested he was at ease, instead of the tightly-controlled almost-military way he stood the rest of the time, waiting, and Steve looked him up and down, eyes lingering on the wound at his shoulder, on the graze over his kneecap, at the ribbons of water that flowed over his skin. 

They had soap, had cloths, and the point of the shower was to get clean – none of them would have managed anything else. So Clint watched when Steve washed Natasha's hair, as she watched when Steve washed Clint's. When she used a cloth to wipe the grime from Steve's face, Clint stroked soap down the skin of her back, mindful of the scratches there. When Clint checked the bruising at Steve's flank, she ran her hands over the wound at Clint's shoulder. 

And when Natasha stood behind Steve and asked him to kneel, Clint pressed his hand over Steve's eyes to keep the soap from them as her fingers eased over his scalp. Steve drew Clint close when they were done, pressing his face to Clint's stomach because he needed him, just as he needed the hand Natasha settled between his shoulders. 

“Sleep,” Clint said softly, his voice a hum in Steve's ears, and he nodded slowly, letting Clint go when he made to move, ignoring the ache in his chest at Clint's absence. 

Drying while being dried was something he'd never done before, and he took his time to be sure of his gentleness, to be certain that it was done thoroughly and properly. The towels were warm and thick, courtesy of Tony's extravagance – Steve had never been so glad for the finest quality fabric and the heated towel-rail before. Steve eased the terrycloth down Clint's spine to ease the tension from his muscles. He cupped Natasha's breasts with it because he wanted to and because she let him. They helped him reach his legs when the bruising made it difficult to bend. And, when they were done, Natasha – a towel still around her head to keep her wet hair warm – took Steve's hand and led him forward, back into the bedroom. 

Without thinking, Steve reached back for Clint's hand and found it easily, the three of them a chain together.

She got into bed first, tucking herself between the sheets with just as much grace as she always did, and Steve followed her feeling more ungainly than he ever had. Clint settled behind him swiftly, tugging the covers up over them all, and J.A.R.V.I.S, ever watchful over all of them, aware of their routines and their needs by now, drew the blinds.

They drew closer slowly, Natasha tucking Steve's head down against her collarbone, her arm over his shoulders where Clint's slid over his waist, his breath warm on the back of Steve's neck. And, lying in their bed, pressed tight and held close by both of them, he closed his eyes. And they slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Notice any typos or grammatical errors? [Message me on tumblr and let me know!](http://justanotherstonyfan.tumblr.com/ask)


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